Learning from Social Media: How to Deal with Downtime

If your website is going to be down for maintenance, redesign or major updates, it is important to not leave your visitors hanging. Think of it this way: Would you close your office without leaving any kind of indication of where you were or why you were closed?

First, here are a few examples of how social media and social networking sites deal with downtime. After that, I’ll list a few things you should keep in mind when scheduling downtime.

Viral Content Sharing Report

Dan Zarella has just released a report on viral content sharing:

Finally, after sneak peeks and status updates, the report is done.

Its a study of why and how people share content online and it explores content type preferences, sharing methods, motivations, reach and frequency.

You can check out the table of contents here.

If you like the report, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

It requires registration, but is certainly worth the few seconds that takes.

The Facebook Marketing Toolbox

There are tons of useful tools here for anyone interested in using Facebook to advance their cause.

If you’re thinking of tapping into the Facebook crowd for some high-profile advertising, take a look at this list of 100 tools and tips that will help you maximize all of the applications and opportunities that Facebook has to offer.

See the full list here.

When SEO and Usability Go Head to Head, Advanced WordPress SEO,

As I mentioned in my webinar last month, Search Engine Optimization is useless if your site is not interesting to real people. Site visibility has some additional thoughts on situations in which SEO and usability can be at odds with each other. My general rule is: Focus on the end user above all. If an SEO tactic takes away from the user’s experience, it is not worth implementing.

SEO Gadget explains an advanced wordpress SEO technique in which you can display different social media buttons on different posts, as relevant. This looks very useful, and I’ll be trying it shortly.

Mashable has 35 examples of corporations using social media. Skimming through these might give you some ideas you can modify for your own use.

Chris Brogan has a list of 20 Ebooks about Social Media. Thanks Chris.

Reading anything useful today?

PDF Metadata for SEO and More Common Website Mistakes

I had no idea, but it turns out PDF metadata can be useful in helping you generate traffic from search engines.

Searchengineland has six common website mistakes that are costing you money. Whether or not you are concerned with the financial aspect, these mistakes will in fact cost you web traffic, so you should make sure to avoid them.

Yet another story about Facebook dethroning Myspace. Happened about two years ago, in my mind.

Reading anything interesting today?